* Roy M. Turner
| But there's the problem.  I'm not about to move all our code, only some
| of which is written in Lisp, from Sun to Linux until I know that the
| Linux version of ACL will be a full product, not only with support (which
| I don't use very much at all) but with the same upgrade path as the Unix
| version.  So I'm not going to invest the money or (especially) the time,
| come to rely on the Linux version, only to find later that it is becoming
| increasingly out-of-date and possibly unsupported.  If they offer the
| product, then it makes sense, but not before, at least not to me.

  oh, I understand.  I went through a long process with my sales rep at
  Franz Inc that culminated in being promised support and maintenance for
  the foreseeable future when we need it, all in the understanding that a
  product would come out, with a lot of ifs: IF Linux is a viable platform
  as such, IF a suitable number of customers want to pay for Allegro CL on
  Linux, IF there is a suitable consensus among Linux installations what to
  use (there's a _terrible_ mess with almost as many configurations as
  there are machines), etc, etc.  right now, however, Linux will save a
  project, and Allegro CL on it will cut the costs on half, and all we
  needed was an assurance that we could keep this running for a while and
  get a suitable warning if and when Franz Inc decides to productize Linux
  or not -- at worst we could perhaps invest in a stabler computer and
  operating system after all the development costs had been absorbed over a
  few years.  this is a fairly specific need and set of conditions, so I
  fully understand that others may have a different view on this.  I'm just
  trying to show Franz Inc as hard as I can that Linux is worth going for,
  and that basically means getting more people to trust the Franz Inc/Linux
  combo, but I also understand how hard that can be -- and I have the above
  alluded-to long process to prove it!

  let's hope the Linux world is ready for Allegro CL!  otherwise, we'd have
  to go for CMUCL on Linux and they have _years_ ahead of them to be as
  good as Allegro CL is, although they do pay more attention to conformance.
  
#:Erik